1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an activity monitoring system and method for transmitting information for activity monitoring, and more particularly, to an activity monitoring system capable of reducing the power consumption of an activity sensor device by reducing the size of the activity sensor device and smoothly transmitting activity and occupancy information from the activity sensor device and an occupancy sensor device to an activity monitoring server to monitor a user's activity and occupancy information, and a method for transmitting information for activity monitoring.
2. Description of the Related Art
As modern society is increasingly faced with the reality of a rapidly increasing aging population, the importance of monitoring the health of senior citizens to ensure their security at home is paramount.
However, most health monitoring is largely focused on the measurement of the bio-signals of human bodies (i.e., individuals), rather than monitoring the activities of individuals.
Even if user's activities are monitored, the monitoring is limited to very simple activities such as falls.
Activity monitoring refers to monitoring all of an individual's concrete physical activities (e.g., sitting, standing, lying, walking, running, etc.). If the individual's concrete activity information is combined with information concerning the individual's occupancy of furniture such as a couch or a bed or the user's location information, more useful information can be obtained to be used for multiple health monitoring services.
The information obtained from activity monitoring may be used for analyzing an individual's activity patterns, and through the analysis, the information can be used to help correct any undesirable activity to help maintain the individual's health. Thus, research on activity monitoring is actively ongoing.
The related art for activity monitoring includes a US Laid Open Publication No. 2006/0284979 A1 (Entitled Activity recognition apparatus, method and program). This art was devised to recognize an activity of a sensor wearer by using a linear motion sensor and a rotational motion sensor. However, this related art provides classification of the sensor wearer's activities such as walking, running, lying, and the like, but fails to provide furniture usage information or location detection function.
In addition, a technique that recognizes various daily activities upon detecting the use of a basic activity sensor by an individual has been presented. However, this technique merely uses occupancy information concerning individual's occupancy of furniture or the like, without combining this with an individual's activity information, so it lacks the ability to monitor the individual's physical activities.
Further, a technique that wirelessly monitors various bio-signals to detect a fall or an individual's location has been developed, but it has a problem in that the monitoring activity is limited to a fall. In addition, with this technique, the detected location is somewhat inaccurate, allowing only a rough estimation of the individual's location, and the accuracy of detecting the location is degraded due to the presence of obstacles.